What is science and what constitutes it?

[TagliatelliMonster]

In several ancient mythical/cosmological cultural telling of the creation, they have this to be eternal and infinite of nature and with an eternal transformal process of formation > dissolution > and re-formation as a cycle and re-cycle of everything.

Why would I care about the superstitious musings of ancient cultures?

This is by all means more logic than the speculations in modern cosmological science - and it even obeys the laws of energy conservation - which cannot be said by the Big Bang theory.

You don't even realize that big bang theory is about the universe's expansion and not about its origins. So I'm not even going to bother dealing with yet another strawman.

There is more logics in the ancient myths than in modern cosmological science if understanding the mythical language and its cosmological extent in these 3-4-5 thousand year old telling.
This is especially why modern science needs more natural observers and pondering philosophers in modern science.

Well, you go ahead and waste your time trying to decipher ancient superstitious musings and "thinking" about it, while scientists actually study testable reality. They'll make progress, and you'll just sit there.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You're a believer.

In the very post you are replying to, I'm explicitly stating that I'm not.

Did you miss it, or are you deliberately being dishonest?

If you can't reply with a speck of intellectual honesty, then just don't bother por favor.

You so strongly believe there is no God

Never said that either. More strawmen. More intellectual dishonesty.

you'll grasp at any straw that offers an alternative.

I don't need "alternatives" for things that are asserted without evidence.

But this isn't what makes you a "believer". You're a believer because you don't understand how science works and must take most things on faith. You have faith in efficacy and accuracy of scientific enquiry. You have faith that Peers will root out and expose any evil.

I don't need faith in science, when I can see the results of it.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...
Well, you go ahead and waste your time trying to decipher ancient superstitious musings and "thinking" about it, while scientists actually study testable reality. They'll make progress, and you'll just sit there.

It may that there is a limit to that and we can't know everything. As a sort of joke I learned that we treat science as being against claims of absolute, because it is fallible, but that is absolute.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

And what do you imagine inflationary theory "predicts"? What is its "empirical" foundation? It "predicts" nothing in the manner that one typically would understand this term outside of certain areas within physics, because the models are constructed based upon known physics and observations and then unknown physics (e.g., and in particular, "inflatons") are introduced in a manner that allows us to produce a wide-variety of models that can yield any predictions we like. Its "success" is primarily in the ability to produce such models.
So, in short, inflationary models are constructed by taking what we know from observations and known physics and the resulting cosmology, and then introducing physics that we not only have no evidence for, but that we also don't actually understand beyond the features that we select (e.g., scalar-valued quantum fields that we demand to cause certain results to produce inflation in the manner we would like).
We can then look at the variety of models that can "predict" what we already know, and see what other features seem to be demanded alongside. It is at this stage, for the most part, that certain multiversal claims are supposedly substantiated by the sorts of models that yield the observed imbalances, inhomogeneities, flatness, etc., and that do so in a manner that many prefer to e.g., the anthropic principle or simply just accepting that what we see is what we get rather than demanding an explanation for what appears to be an otherwise unnatural and/or finely-tuned set of small parameters necessary to explain the universe find ourselves in.

So, these are "well-supported" only if one accepts a fundamental premise for which inflationary cosmology was introduced in the first place: that the universe appears to be highly improbable, unnatural, and finely-tuned in a manner that should be explained by some sort of physical "mechanism" that we lack any evidence or support for. That inflationary models tend to suggest multiverse cosmologies ought to be understood as a weakness of our basic lack of any understanding of the physics that we are proposing to have taken place in order to cause the inflation that is itself supported by the desire to produce the observed universe in a manner that does not rely on fine-tuning or shrugging off the nearly impossible probabilities that the observed universe is as we find it by chance.
This, again, is quite similar to the kind of "argument from design" used by creationists and the like. Sure, it has more mathematics and unlike arguments from design we can examine the different scenarios that result from altering the distributions of various parameters that one cannot by asserting "God did it", but this sort of speculation remains exactly this until either one accepts that 1) a seemingly unnaturally finely-tuned universe requires some kind of explanation or 2) we find some sort of actual empirical support for inflation, such as a plausible physical theory that can be tested rather than introducing yet another dreamt up quantum field we've never encountered and don't understand but, like the "drainons" of the string theoretic swampland, are supported by yielding results in models that we like (in the case of "drainons", it is the draining of the swampland approach to string landscapes; in the case of "inflatons", it is inflation)..

Go argue with physicists if you think you know better.

I'm not arrogant enough to think I know better.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

In the very post you are replying to, I'm explicitly stating that I'm not.

Did you miss it, or are you deliberately being dishonest?

...

Well, you just made one post in one thread today that is a belief. You still have a hard time understanding the limitations of rational, knowledge and methodological naturalism.

Being honest sometimes includes being a skeptic and admit I don't know,

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...

I was replying to a statement that I find it easier to believe in a multiverse then to believe in creation gods. The answer is YES I DO and I explained why.

So you do believe without knowledge. So you are irrational like the rest of us.

 

[Native]

Except that big-bang theory is about the expansion of the universe and not its origins.
But hey, strawman away

And strawman back as such an expansion have to have a causal origine Otherwise we´re discussing metaphysics and other occultism.

 

[Native]

Why would I care about the superstitious musings of ancient cultures?

Well if you can believe in an occult gravity which no one can explain, on black holes, dark matter and dark energy, the sky is the limit.

 

[cladking]

Well, you go ahead and waste your time trying to decipher ancient superstitious musings and "thinking" about it, while scientists actually study testable reality.

Nonsense!

They are NOT studying these "ancient superstitious musings" because they made up their minds BEFORE they even looked at them. This is the nature of homo omnisciencis; we can only reason in circles. When proof was found that they are neither superstitious nor ignorant it is ignored just like Chaos Theory and everything else that doesn't fit into their nice neat compartmentalized understanding of a clockwork universe governed by mathematics. They induce reality, not study it.

They are not studying science which is much of the fault. If we look into the nature of science then we will see that results are dependent on experiment and experiment agrees with ancient thought rather than our understanding of reality.

 

[cladking]

I don't need faith in science, when I can see the results of it.

Homo omnisciencis.

All true knowledge is experiential. While I can define this term broadly the fact remains you "know" all kinds of stuff that you read in books and take on faith. On this basis you know far more than I but much of what you believe is simply false. Key aspects of all of your models are simply false. But you are still going to see all of reality in terms of these beliefs that you call "models". You believe that you can just change your models as new experiment arises but as I've told you countless times all future experiment will probably continue to shows your models are in error. People don't change their models which is EXACTLY why science changes one funeral at a time.

 

[cladking]

I don't need faith in science, when I can see the results of it.

Technology isn't derived strictly from theory. It is derived more directly from experiment in most instances.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Homo omnisciencis.

All true knowledge is experiential. While I can define this term broadly the fact remains you "know" all kinds of stuff that you read in books and take on faith. On this basis you know far more than I but much of what you believe is simply false. Key aspects of all of your models are simply false. But you are still going to see all of reality in terms of these beliefs that you call "models". You believe that you can just change your models as new experiment arises but as I've told you countless times all future experiment will probably continue to shows your models are in error. People don't change their models which is EXACTLY why science changes one funeral at a time.

The fun thing is that both true and false are different kind of models. But you in effect conflate to models of true and false. His beliefs are not false as per observation because you can't see that. They are false because you judge then to be false. So you use experimental true knowledge and false false, because in judgmentally false. Learn to be consistent.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Technology is derived strictly from theory. It is derived more directly from experiment in most instances.

What? I don't understand that.

 

[Native]

People don't change their models which is EXACTLY why science changes one funeral at a time.

An excellent notion indeed

 

[Native]

The fun thing is that both true and false are different kind of models. But you in effect conflate to models of true and false. His beliefs are not false as per observation because you can't see that. They are false because you judge then to be false. So you use experimental true knowledge and false false, because in judgmentally false. Learn to be consistent.

Isn´t all this just a "theory of theories" without any factual cosmological substance which can be discussed?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Isn´t all this just a "theory of theories" without any factual cosmological substance which can be discussed?

Well, we have been before. All claims beyond that there is an objective reality, but rather what objective reality is other than being independent of the mind are beliefs without truth, proof or evidence. You can do that and so can I. We just do differently.

 

[cladking]

What? I don't understand that.

"Technology is derived strictly from theory. It is derived more directly from experiment in most instances."

I'm sorry. Those first words are supposed to be "Technology isn't derived..." .

I often leave out the negative inadvertently. I'll fix it.

 

[cladking]

Well, we have been before. All claims beyond that there is an objective reality, but rather what objective reality is other than being independent of the mind are beliefs without truth, proof or evidence. You can do that and so can I. We just do differently.

This is a point I've made a thousand times from countless perspectives.

The very reason we all reason circularly is that axioms and assumptions necessarily determine where we end up. We are homo omnisciencis and the reason we know everything is we each see what we believe because beliefs underlie all human experience and we each have different beliefs. This applies to every member of the human species now because we each learn language which is the mechanism by which we think and by which we acquire beliefs.

I am different in that I began not with math (counting), faith, or science. I began with the assumptions that we each have free will and that there is an objective reality that is defined largely by our collective perceptions. This reality exists despite anyone's or everyone's beliefs. Like all members of our species I ended up right at the assumptions but from this perspective things look somewhat different. Experiment shows something different than everyone imagines and very few people see how science really works or even why it works.

Obviously every one of my conclusions are predicated on my assumptions so if any of these assumptions like "cause precedes effect" are incorrect then I am wrong at least in part if not in whole.

Scientific beliefs are simply called "models". They are no different than any other beliefs. Some scientists have a great deal of experiential knowledge and this is different than any "belief" because scientific experiential knowledge is necessarily correct from at least some perspective. All experiential knowledge is correct from some perspective but not always applicable.

From my perspective of objective "reality" the universe is not a clockwork in any way. It is a manifestation of logic itself and this logic merely appears to be law. We assume that because mathematics can often be applied to reality that reality must obey the same "laws" as math. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ancient science was different. It was all deductive and individuals only saw what they understood just like ALL other life forms which are each individual. The science learned a great deal and all from a human perspective but it failed with Ancient Language which used to program the human brain.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Go argue with physicists if you think you know better.

They are my colleagues, as this is my living (physics, mostly quantum foundations but also statistics of complex systems and statistical physics, data analysis in HEP, etc.). I am not, however, a cosmological. Luckily, however, cosmologists don't try to hide well-known facts. They disagree about many things as we do in physics and the sciences more generally, but it is well-known even by the most hard-core proponents of inflation that the evidence is based on models that require inserting physics we have no evidence of and do not understand (in terms of how these fields could actually work if they existed) to "predict" observations we already made. Later observations that have contradicted inflationary models are taken to be opportunities to create "better" models, while observations that are in general agreement with classes of inflationary models are taken to be confirmation.
This was brought to a head a few years ago when a popular science article prompted an unusual response from inflation proponents. You can read about it and the response of the critics here:
Pop goes the universe

I get the feeling that you don't read the technical literature and probably don't possess the requisite mathematical and physics background to do so, so I won't bother with references or links to such literature (if I've misjudged, though, please feel free to correct me and I can make said literature available for you)

I'm not arrogant enough to think I know better.

Technically, you are the one arguing with a physicist. But it's ok. I don't mind.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

They are my colleagues, as this is my living (physics, mostly quantum foundations but also statistics of complex systems and statistical physics, data analysis in HEP, etc.). I am not, however, a cosmological. Luckily, however, cosmologists don't try to hide well-known facts. They disagree about many things as we do in physics and the sciences more generally, but it is well-known even by the most hard-core proponents of inflation that the evidence is based on models that require inserting physics we have no evidence of and do not understand (in terms of how these fields could actually work if they existed) to "predict" observations we already made. Later observations that have contradicted inflationary models are taken to be opportunities to create "better" models, while observations that are in general agreement with classes of inflationary models are taken to be confirmation.
This was brought to a head a few years ago when a popular science article prompted an unusual response from inflation proponents. You can read about it and the response of the critics here:
Pop goes the universe

I get the feeling that you don't read the technical literature and probably don't possess the requisite mathematical and physics background to do so, so I won't bother with references or links to such literature (if I've misjudged, though, please feel free to correct me and I can make said literature available for you)

Technically, you are the one arguing with a physicist. But it's ok. I don't mind.

I am not close to being an actual natural scientist, but from my understanding of philosophy I believe I get what is going on.
We have a set of observations and explanations based on these observations in general terms. If you then add a (set of) assumption(s), which haven't been tested yet, you get one cognitive result. If you add another, you get another. But neither is actual science as observed and test in the everyday world. But some people don't get that, because it is science, so it must be true in some sense.